Scottie Wilson Plate

Category: Ceramics

Date: Circa 1960s

Designer: Scottie Wilson

Nationality of Designer: Scottish

Manufacturer: Royal Worcester

Manufacturers Location: Worcester, England (U.K)

Material: Earthenware and transfer under glaze

Dimensions: Diameter 25.5 cm

Abstract:

Dinner Plate

Provenance:

Signed to base. Purchased from eBay by Adam Sutherland

Personal history/nominator:

"This plate brings together the maverick creative - Outsider
artist Scottie Wilson - and one of the UK's most loved and
mainstream cultural landmarks, Royal Worcester. I particularly
enjoy the complexity of this collaboration: Wilson, the celebrated
and feted Outsider (a contradiction in terms) and Worcester, the
very image of establishment culture, trying to get hip in the 60's.
It is interesting to note this collaboration is not referenced on
the Royal Worcester Museum website."

Adam Sutherland

Adaptions/renovations:

None- good condition

Why it's in the Collection:

Scottie Wilson was discovered during the 1940's
enthusiasm for folk art, alongside other notables
such as Alfred Wallis. Wilson was represented by
the gallery Gimpel Fils and stories of his
eccentricity in relation to the art market are legion. It would be
fair to say he never really understood the art market or his
popularity within it.

These designs for Worcester are stylistically
challenged and not representative of Wilson's best work. He also
painted directly onto ceramic shapes, but these are similarly
unsatisfying, appearing simply decorative and losing the intensity
of his paper doodles. He was reluctant to release work and provided
the minimum required, hence Worcester had to work with a single
drawing, altering size and configuration of the design.

For the Collection the plate is of interest to the collection as
it documents the initial wave of interest in, and commercialisation
of, the alternative form of creative expression now referred to as
Outsider or folk art, which Wilson embodies.
Folk art is of particular
interest to Grizedale Arts with many artists exploring this area
and long standing collaborations with folk artists such as
Peter Hodgson (also represented in the
Collection).

About the Designer/Maker:

"I'm listening to classical music one day - Mendelssohn -
when all of a sudden I dipped the bulldog pen into a bottle of ink
and started drawing - doodling I suppose you'd call it - on the
cardboard tabletop. I don't know why. I just did. In a couple of
days - I worked almost ceaselessly - the whole of the tabletop was
covered with little faces and designs. The pen seemed to make me
draw, and then images, the faces and designs just flowed out. I
couldn't stop - I've never stopped since that day."Scottie Wilson

Scottie Wilson, born Louis Freeman, (1891-
1972) was perhaps unsurprisingly Scottish, originating from
Glasgow. After serving in the First World War he
emigrated to Canada where, for many years, ran a second hand shop
in Montreal, discovering his particular ability for drawing or
doodling on scraps of paper which became highly desirable and sold
through the 'diabolically cluttered office' of the Toronto based
art dealer Duncan Douglas. Later in his career
Wilson refused to sell his originals. As with many
'Outsiders' the art market was clearly a puzzle
which he attempted to manipulate with the low cunning of the
eccentric.

Throughout his life Wilson complained of poverty but on his
death his house was, predictably found to be stuffed with
cash, a habit he shared with the avant-garde performance
artist Ken Dodd and many others of the ilk. In
Wilson's heyday Picasso and Dubuffet physically
fought over who should have the right to buy one of his drawings,
and critics and cultural theorists raved about his oeuvre.

Wilson was championed by Jazz surrealist eccentric
George Melly who also wrote a book on Scottie.

Bibliography & Further information

It's All Writ Out for You: The Life and Work of Scottie
Wilson, George Melly, Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1986,
ISBN-10: 0500274096